{"id":7503,"date":"2010-03-11T10:35:33","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T15:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/?p=7503"},"modified":"2010-03-11T10:35:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T15:35:33","slug":"forex-economics-us-trade-deficit-unexpectedly-narrows-in-january-weekly-jobless-claims-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2010\/03\/11\/forex-economics-us-trade-deficit-unexpectedly-narrows-in-january-weekly-jobless-claims-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Forex Economics: US Trade deficit unexpectedly narrows in January. Weekly Jobless Claims fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

By CountingPips.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States trade deficit decreased unexpectedly in January as imports fell at a faster pace than exports, according to a release by the Commerce Department today. The U.S. trade deficit decreased by $2.6 billion to a total international trade deficit of $37.3 billion in January following a deficit of $39.9 billion in December. Today’s trade deficit numbers surpassed the market forecasts that were expecting the deficit would rise to approximately $41.0 billion for the month.<\/p>\n

January’s trade in goods deficit fell by $2.5 billion to a total goods deficit of $49 billion while the surplus in services rose by $0.1 billion to a total surplus of $12.1 billion.<\/p>\n

On an annual basis, the U.S. trade deficit is $0.4 billion higher than the January 2009 level as exports have increased by 15 percent ($18.7 billion) while imports have increased 11.9 percent ($19.1 billion) annually.<\/p>\n

Contributing to the decreased deficit level was a decline in January imports by $3.1 billion from December to a total of $180.0 billion. Imports had increased for four straight months before January’s turnaround. U.S. exports declined for the month to a total of $142.7 billion which was a decrease of $0.5 billion from December\u2019s total.<\/p>\n

The politically sensitive U.S. trade deficit with China edged up in January, despite the overall deficit decrease. The deficit with China rose to $18.3 billion in January from a deficit of $18.1 billion in December. Other notable U.S. trade deficits were with the European Union at $2.8 billion, Japan at $3.3 billion, Mexico at $4.6 billion, OPEC at $7.2 billion and Canada at $3.9 billion.<\/p>\n

U.S. trade surpluses with other countries for January included Australia at $0.9 billion, Hong Kong at $1.6 billion and Belgium at $0.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Weekly Jobless Claims fall by 6,000.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A separate government release by the U.S. Labor Department showed that weekly U.S. jobless claims decreased in the week that ended on March 6th. New jobless claims edged down to a total of 462,000 unemployed workers, a decline over the prior week by 6,000 workers. The jobless claims data was right in line with expectations as market forecasts predicted a fall to 460,000 jobless claims. The 4-week moving average of unemployed workers rose by 5,000 from the prior week to a total of 475,500.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, workers seeking continuing claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending February 27th increased for the week. Continuing claims rose by 37,000 workers to a total of 4,558,000 unemployed workers. The four week moving average of continuing claims showed no change for the week to remain at 4,581,000 workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New jobless claims edged down to a total of 462,000 workers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}